Campuspeak

it's the end of an era and a start of something new...from now on, my goal is to post here every (other) day, putting up an interesting article or picture or quote or thought. kick me if i don't.

today's item is Campuspeak, an article I found in the New York Times about how college students blend words together to form their own lexicon. At first I was a little skeptical about the novelty of our so-called newslang, but it turns out that so many words and phrases mentioned in the article are ones that I take for granted, simple things like ginormous/sketchy/anyhoo/hallcest. I think it really goes to show how vibrant language is, how quickly it changes to reflect the times. Its key in understanding any culture; knowing word nuances, phrasings, or even how a sentence is formed in a language suggests more about a culture than any other single thing. A basic study of how the English language has changed since 40 years ago would probably reveal more than we would think about how we have evolved societally and culturally. For example, the sudden creation and popularity of 'techy' words like blog or webpage indicates how much we have come to rely on the web. I have to run to bed now, but enjoy the article :)